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Amid red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, declared this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret occurred at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. Last year, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have attempted to reconcile for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”